HistoricalChristian.Faith

Tertullian on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 210 AD (Tertullian, c. 155 – c. 220; the first major Christian theologian to write in Latin, a presbyter of Carthage whose treatises — Scorpiace, De Anima, De Monogamia, De Corona, the Prescription against Heretics — belong to the first two decades of the third century) · Wikipedia
Summary: Tertullian, the earliest Latin Father, uses the disputed books in his own argument without ever drawing up a canon-list. He quotes the deuterocanonical Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6) as the words of “Jeremias,” beside Daniel; he ranks the Wisdom of Solomon among “our Christian authorities” (one of his two Wisdom citations is disputed, the other secure); and he twice adduces Judith and Susanna as examples of holiness. The force is graded — Baruch under a prophet’s name, Wisdom as authority, Judith and Susanna only as saintly examples — but together they make him the earliest Western witness to the practical use of the deuterocanon, in the very African church that would later receive these books in conciliar form.

Claims & evidence

He quotes the Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch 6:3) as the words of “Jeremias,” beside Daniel 3

Wherefore the brotherhood of the three also, when the dedication of the royal image was the occasion of the citizens being pressed to offer worship, knew well what faith, which alone in them had not been taken captive, required,—namely, that they must resist idolatry to the death. For they remembered also the words of Jeremias writing to those over whom that captivity was impending: “And now ye shall see borne upon (men’s) shoulders the gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, causing fear to the Gentiles. Beware, therefore, that ye also do not be altogether like the foreigners, and be seized with fear while ye behold crowds worshipping those gods before and behind, but say in your mind, Our duty is to worship Thee, O Lord.” Therefore, having got confidence from God, they said, when with strength of mind they set at defiance the king’s threats against the disobedient…

— Scorpiace (Antidote for the Scorpion’s Sting), ch. 8, source.¹ The words Tertullian ascribes to “Jeremias” are not from the canonical Jeremiah but from the deuterocanonical Letter of Jeremiah (carried in the Greek and Latin Bibles as Baruch ch. 6, the “Epistle of Jeremy”; the warning against the Babylonian idols stands at v. 3). He cites it as genuine prophecy, woven into the same exhortation as the protocanonical Daniel 3 — the deuterocanonical book treated, under Jeremiah’s name, exactly as the canonical prophet beside it.

He ranks the Wisdom of Solomon among “our Christian authorities” (Wisdom 1:6 — disputed)

…and better than all others, there are our Christian authorities. We are taught by God concerning both these questions—viz. that there is a ruling power in the soul, and that it is enshrined in one particular recess of the body. For, when one reads of God as being “the searcher and witness of the heart;” when His prophet is reproved by His discovering to him the secrets of the heart; when God Himself anticipates in His people the thoughts of their heart, “Why think ye evil in your hearts?” when David prays “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” and Paul declares, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,” and John says, “By his own heart is each man condemned”…

— A Treatise on the Soul (De Anima), ch. 15, source.² Tertullian opens the chain of proofs with “our Christian authorities” and reads of God as “the searcher and witness of the heart” — a phrase the Ante-Nicene Fathers apparatus, and the editors, identify as Wisdom of Solomon 1:6 — set beside Proverbs, Matthew, the Psalms, Paul, and 1 John with no mark of distinction. The attribution is, however, disputed: Roger Beckwith argues the words echo Psalm 139:23 (“Search me, O God, and know my heart”) rather than Wisdom, so this particular citation should not be pressed as a settled Wisdom quotation. His firmer, undisputed use of the book follows.

He cites the opening of Wisdom (1:1) as taught from “the porch of Solomon” (undisputed)

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.”

— The Prescription against Heretics, ch. 7, source.³ The saying “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart” is the opening verse of the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon (1:1, “seek him in simplicity of heart”), which the Ante-Nicene Fathers note at this passage marks expressly as “Wisdom of Solomon, i. 1.” Tertullian ascribes it to Solomon (“the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught”) and makes it the source of Christian instruction over against pagan philosophy — an undisputed citation of Wisdom as authority, the firm counterpart to the contested De Anima reference above.

He adduces Judith, “daughter of Merari,” among “examples of saints”

But upon this (infirmity) will sit in judgment no longer an Isaac, our monogamist father; or a John, a noted voluntary celibate of Christ’s; or a Judith, daughter of Merari; or so many other examples of saints.

— On Monogamy (De Monogamia), ch. 17, source.⁴ Judith — the heroine of the deuterocanonical book, widowed and never remarried — is placed beside the patriarch Isaac and John (whether the Baptist or the apostle) as a pattern of the single-married life. This is the weakest of the four uses: she is named as a historical example of holiness, not adduced as a cited authority, much as Clement of Rome had held up “the blessed Judith” a century earlier.

He sets Susanna’s unveiling beside Rebecca’s veil

If Susanna also, who was subjected to unveiling on her trial, furnishes an argument for the veiling of women, I can say here also, the veil was a voluntary thing. She had come accused, ashamed of the disgrace she had brought on herself, properly concealing her beauty, even because now she feared to please.

— The Chaplet (De Corona), ch. 4, source.⁵ Susanna — the deuterocanonical addition to Daniel (Tertullian’s Latin reckons it “Dan. xiii.”) — is set beside the protocanonical Rebecca (Genesis 24:65) in a discussion of veiling. As with Judith, the book supplies an example drawn on in argument, not a proof-text cited as “Scripture.”

Notes

• Use, not a canon-list. Tertullian nowhere enumerates the Old-Testament books, so he renders no canon-verdict; like Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus before him, he simply uses the disputed books in the course of his argument. He bears on the canon question as a witness to practice, not to a list.
• The force is graded. The four citations are not of equal weight. Baruch (the Letter of Jeremiah) is quoted under a prophet’s name as genuine prophecy — the firmest. Wisdom is adduced as a “Christian authority” (with one disputed text in De Anima and one secure text in the Prescription). Judith and Susanna are named only as saintly examples, the weakest register — the same kind of historical illustration, not citation-as-Scripture.
• The Beckwith dispute, kept open. The De Anima 15 phrase “the searcher and witness of the heart” has long been read as Wisdom 1:6 (so the Ante-Nicene Fathers apparatus), but Roger Beckwith argues it is Psalm 139:23 instead. The page does not present that citation as settled; Tertullian’s use of Wisdom stands firm independently on the undisputed Prescription against Heretics 7 (Wisdom 1:1), so the witness does not hinge on the contested verse.
• The earliest Latin witness. As the first major Christian writer in Latin, Tertullian is the earliest Western witness to the practical use of the deuterocanon — and he writes from Carthage, the very African church whose councils of Hippo and Carthage would, two centuries later, enact the longer canon as a conciliar rule. His successor at Carthage, Cyprian, would quote the same books outright as “sacred Scripture.”
• Bearing on the argument. Tertullian stands on the “using” side of the divide weighed in the argument “Did the early church reject the deuterocanon…?” (assessed contested): the earliest Latin Father, c. 210, quoting Baruch as Jeremiah and Wisdom as a Christian authority, and adducing Judith and Susanna among the saints — further weight against the flat claim that the primitive church did not reckon these books Scripture, a generation before the Hebrew-sized lists of Origen and the later Western councils that received them.

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